Huawei Technologies marked its foray into further competition with Apple as it unveiled the long-anticipated Mate XT, a tri-fold smartphone in a Z shape.
The just-unveiled model hours after Apple launched its newest iPhones will increase Huawei's lead in China's foldable phone market for a brand striving to keep dominance in the world's largest smartphone market.
The Mate XT, already available for preorder without deposit on Huawei's website, has created quite a stir, with over 3.3 million preorders in mainland China. To put that number into perspective, foldable phone shipments reached only 4 million units in the second quarter of 2024 across the entire global market, according to IDC. It indicates the demand for foldable in China, where Huawei still has the edge over its rivals, Samsung and Apple.
Huawei currently leads 27.5% in the global foldable smartphone market, while that rises to 42% in China, based on the success of its earlier two-way foldable phones. Huawei's strong sales in China allowed it to overtake Samsung as the number one foldable phone vendor globally this year. But analysts say the Mate XT will, due to its probable premium price, be more a showpiece for Huawei's technology than a mass-market product.
“While the Mate XT will undoubtedly reinforce Huawei’s reputation for innovation, it may not have a substantial impact on Apple or Samsung’s overall market share outside of specific regions,” said Jene Park, an analyst at Counterpoint Research.
Huawei may hold the crown in the foldable market, but its brand still needs to overcome many obstacles to widen foldables' appeal. Indeed, even as interest in those devices rises, foldable smartphones make up just 1.3% of the wider smartphone market, against 292.2 million smartphones shipped globally in Q2 2024. Price is still a big issue, the Mate X5 launched last year for upwards of 10,000 yuan (US$1,406)-nearly twice the price of Apple's newly launched iPhone 15.
The launch of the Mate XT will be a defining moment for Huawei, stuck in the purgatory of living with U.S. sanctions while fighting for market share against giants such as Samsung, Apple, and Xiaomi. Still, there are many bridges in terms of technology that it needs to cross, for instance, screen durability and the reduction of visibility of screen wrinkles- if it is to have a successful future in this market.
But with a tri-fold smartphone in its roadmap and rising pre-orders, Huawei is best placed to continue leading the foldable revolution in China, while the power of Apple across the wider market is hard to ignore